Nobody is on the front porch.
A salad? What about a grilled cheese sandwich? Wasn’t that the classic comfort food?
He’d see the lights on in here. So what? she thought defiantly, before remembering he had a key. He wouldn’t let himself in, would he? He had to know she didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to talk to him.
Soup. There were a bunch of cans in the pantry. Soup was easy.
Fine. Erin went to the pantry and decided on tomato, even though it didn’t sound any more appealing than cream of mushroom or corn chowder or black bean.
She would not use Cole as an excuse to regress to the pitiful creature who’d thought it was an achievement when she succeeded in doing one useful thing a day. No more excuses. No leaning on anyone else. She’d made a start. Cole had helped. Reaching for the can opener, Erin thought, The rest is up to me.
She also decided that tomorrow she would let him say his piece.
* * *
WHEN THE FRONT door opened the next morning, Cole jumped.
Wearing her paint-spattered getup, Erin stood in the opening. “Cole?” Her voice was pleasant, the same one she might use for a stranger on her doorstep.
“Uh, can I come in?” He couldn’t seem to stop himself from shifting his weight from foot to foot, even if that did give away his discomfiture. “I’d like to talk to you.”
“Of course.” She stepped back, closing the door when he was inside. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d led him to the living room, where she’d take a vacuum salesman if she’d decided to listen to his pitch. Instead, he trailed her to the kitchen. “Coffee?” she asked.
He didn’t really want any more, but the offering and accepting felt like a bridge. “Thanks.”
She’d had it brewing and only had to pour. A moment later, they were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, exactly as they’d been before he ruined the best thing that had happened to him in a very long time.
Erin waited, her expression inquiring and completely impersonal.
“I need to apologize,” he began.
“I’m pretty sure you already did. I’d just as soon not hear it again.” She betrayed not a shred of emotion.
“It took me a while to figure out—” Damn, it was hard to keep going in the face of that cool stare. Refusing to so much as twitch, he said baldly, “I got scared.”
A tiny crinkle appeared on Erin’s forehead. “Scared of what?”
“Of…letting myself feel too much for you.”
The crinkles became a full-blown frown. “I have never implied in any way that I expected a romance or…or sexual services.” The last was as sharp as an open blade. “Why you felt compelled to warn me off—”
“No,” he interrupted. “You don’t understand. I think…I was pushing you away to keep myself from being too tempted. That was a crappy thing to do.”
At least some emotion showed on her face, even if it was only bewilderment. “But I’ve never so much as touched you,” she said.
He knew what she meant, but she had touched him. She had. He remembered every time she’d laid a fine-boned hand on his forearm, every brush of her body in passing. He especially remembered how it felt to hold her for most of the night.
Cole’s gut knotted. Feeling sick, he knew he had to be completely honest.
He flashed back to something that had happened his first month in the pen. He’d been showering with the usual group of other men. Having ducked his head under the hot stream, he made the foolish mistake of relaxing his awareness. Not until he lifted his head and shook the water from his face did he realize the others had silently left the shower room, leaving water running to cover their retreat. In a terrifying instant, he’d understood that they had been ordered to leave him alone. Before he could so much as spin around, deliberate footsteps sounded on the tile floor behind him. Naked, with nothing in reach that could be turned into a weapon, he had been completely vulnerable.
He’d survived with no more than an ugly scar, but the memory still had the power to turn his stomach inside out. Then, he’d had no choice but to face his fears. Now, he could run away—or face them again.